Poaching is one of the trickier ways to cook eggs, if you care about it keeping a tight, round shape or if you're making several poached eggs at once. Here's a shortcut: Just use a mini mason jar to hold the egg.

Tracy of the Tracy, Cooks blog shows us how simple this is. Crack the egg into the jar and put it in a pot of boiling water (enough to cover the bottom 3/4 of the jar). After about 8 minutes, carefully remove the jar. (You can do it without the lid if you're concerned about the sealed jar exploding.)

One great benefit to this is you can easily see how cooked the eggs are and adjust the timing accordingly. Plus, you might feel better cooking in glass than with an aluminum can.

Technically, the egg is coddled rather than poached, because it's in a container—but the results turn out about the same.